Nikola Tesla said  “If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.”

In the past 5 years, some of my paintings have been concerned with exploring this idea as well as finding a way to express that everything in this world is connected and that we are made of the same stardust as every other animal, plant and mineral. When an animal or a plant goes extinct, we all lose something because every living thing plays a part in this fragile and perfectly balanced ecosystem that allows millions of different life forms to co-exist. 

During our Covid19 lockdowns, the resurgence of wildlife,  on my river, was truly notable. As the skies fell silent from international flights, the river fell silent from tourist trip boats and the road fell quiet from the thousands of motorbikes and buses, mother nature crept out of the undergrowth and reclaimed her dominium. This, together with my reading of Vivienne Westwood’s last autobiography in which she talks about her passion for joining the fight to save the rainforests were inspiration for a short series of protest works about the rainforest entitled ‘Amazonia - Everything is connected’

These pieces took the form of folding books which were papercut (pierced) to ‘let the light shine in’. This image from a piece about the bombing of the rainforest. Bombing the trees, of course, is so much quicker than cutting them down. Never mind the wildlife.

Bombs in the Amazon

Defenseless against attack

Nature’s lungs torn.

The return from this knock-back?

Four thousand desolate years

Goodbye  goodbye and goodbye

Goodbye and goodbye goodbye

And goodbye and goodbye

Goodbye goodbye

And gone.

We feel the shift in the earth’s energy. We sense the vibration of these shocks spreading across the earth and the ether. We feel attacked, enraged and we despair of man’s foolishness. But here we are.

For now.